;        FAIRFIELD    OSBORN 


LIBRARY 

University  of 

California 

Irvine 


ur 


f/ 


HUXLEY 
AND  EDUCATION 


ADDRESS  AT 

THE  OPENING  OF  THE  COLLEGE  YEAR 

COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

SEPTEMBER  28,  1910 


BY 

HENRY  FAIRFIELD  OSBORN 

LL.D.,  HON.  D.Sc.,  CAMB. 
DA  COSTA  PROFESSOR  OF  ZOOLOGY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1910 


Copyright,  1910 
By  HENRY  FAIRFIELD  OSBORN 


THE  DE  VINNE  PRE-33 


HUXLEY  AND   EDUCATION 

"The  stars  come  nightly  to  the  sky; 
The  tidal  wave  comes  to  the  sea ; 
Nor  time,  nor  space,  nor  deep,  nor  high 
Can  keep  my  own  away  from  me." 

— BURROUGHS. 

^  I  ^HE  most  sanguine  day  of  the 
-••  college  year  is  the  opening  one : 
the  student  has  not  yet  faced  the  im- 
possible task  annually  presented  of 
embracing  the  modern  world  of 
knowledge  ;  his  errors  and  failures  of 
earlier  years  are  forgotten  ;  he  faces 
the  coming  months  full  of  new  hope. 
How  would  my  old  master,  Hux- 
ley, address  you  if  he  were  to  find 
you  in  this  felicitous  frame  of  mind, 
sharpening  your  wits  and  your  pen- 
cils for  the  contest  which  will  begin 
to-morrow  morning  in  every  hall  and 
5 


HUXLEY 

laboratory  of  this  great  University  ? 
May  I  speak  for  him  as  I  heard  him 
during  the  winter  of  1879—80  from 
his  lecture  desk  and  as  he  kindly  in 
conversation  gave  me  of  his  stores  of 
wisdom  and  experience  ?  May  I  add 
from  his  truly  brilliant  essays  entitled 
"  Science  and  Education,"  delivered 
between  1874  and  1887?  May  I 
contribute  also  from  my  own  thirty- 
seven  years  of  life  as  a  student  and 
teacher,  beginning  in  1873  and  reach- 
ing a  turning  point  in  1910  when 
Columbia  enrolled  me  among  its  re- 
search professors?  It  was  Huxley's 
life,  his  example,  the  tone  of  his 
writings,  rather  than  his  actual  pre- 
cepts which  most  influenced  me,  for 
in  1879  he  was  so  intensely  absorbed 
in  public  work  and  administration,  as 
well  as  in  research  and  teaching,  that 
little  opportunity  remained  for  lab- 
6 


AND  EDUCATION 

oratory  conferences  with  his  students. 
How  I  happened  to  go  to  him  was 
as  follows : 

Unlucky  —  as  they  appeared  to  me 
at  the  time,  but  lucky  as  I  look  back 
upon  them  —  were  my  own  early 
flounderings  and  blunderings  in  seek- 
ing the  true  method  of  education. 
Huxley  has  observed  of  his  "  Voy- 
age of  the  Rattlesnake  "  that  it  is  a 
good  thing  to  get  down  to  the  bare 
bones  of  existence.  The  same  is  true 
of  self-education.  As  compared  with 
the  hosts  of  to-day,  few  men  in  1 877 
knew  how  to  guide  the  graduate 
youth  ;  the  Johns  Hopkins  was  still 
nascent;  the  creative  force  of  Louis 
Agassiz  had  spent  itself  in  producing 
the  first  school  of  naturalists,  includ- 
ing the  genius,  William  James.  One 
learnt  one's  errors  through  falling 
into  pitfalls.  With  two  companions 
7 


HUXLEY 

I  was  guided  by  a  sort  of  blind  in- 
stinct to  feel  that  the  most  important 
thing  in  life  was  to  make  a  discovery 
of  some  kind.  On  consulting  one  of 
our  most  forceful  and  genial  profess- 
ors his  advice  was  negative  and  dis- 
couraging: "Young  men,"  he  said, 
"go  on  with  your  studies  for  ten 
or  twelve  years  until  you  have  cov- 
ered the  whole  subject;  you  will 
then  be  ready  for  research  of  your 
own."  There  appeared  to  be  some- 
thing wrong  about  this,  although  we 
did  not  know  exactly  what.  We  dis- 
regarded the  advice,  left  the  labora- 
tory of  this  professor,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  year  did  succeed  in  writing 
a  paper  which  subsequently  attracted 
the  attention  of  Huxley  and  was  the 
indirect  means  of  an  introduction  to 
Darwin.  It  was  a  lame  product,  but 
it  was  ours,  and  in  looking  back  upon 

8 


AND  EDUCATION 

it,  one  feels  with  Touchstone  in  his 
comment  upon  Audrey : 


"A  poor  virgin,  Sir, 
An  ill  favored  thing,  Sir, 
But  mine  own." 


I  shall  present  in  this  brief  address 
only  one  idea,  namely,  the  lesson  of 
Huxley's  life  and  the  result  of  my  own 
experience  is  that  productive  thinking 
is  the  chief  means  as  well  as  the  chief 
end  of  education,  and  that  the  natural 
evolution  of  education  will  be  to  de- 
velop this  kind  of  thinking  earlier  and 
earlier  in  the  life  of  the  student. 

One  of  the  most  marvelous  of  the 
manifold  laws  of  evolution  is  what  is 
called  '  acceleration'  By  this  law  the 
beginning  of  an  important  organ  like 
the  eye  of  the  chick,  for  example,  is 
thrust  forward  into  a  very  early  stage 
9 


HUXLEY 

of  embryonic  development.  This  is, 
first,  because  the  eye  is  a  very  com- 
plex organ  and  needs  a  long  time  for 
development,  and  second  because  the 
fully  formed  eye  of  most  animals  is 
needed  immediately  at  birth.  I  pre- 
dict that  the  analogy  in  the  evolution 
of  education  will  be  very  close.  Pro- 
ductive thinking  may  be  compared  to 
the  eye;  it  is  needed  by  the  student 
the  moment  he  graduates,  or  is 
hatched,  so  to  speak;  it  is  now  devel- 
oped only  in  the  graduate  schools.  It 
is  such  an  integral  and  essential  part 
of  education  that  the  spirit  of  it  is 
destined  to  be  *  accelerated,'  or  thrust 
forward  into  the  opening  and  prepara- 
tory years. 

If  the  lines  of  one's  life  were  to  be 
cast  afresh,  if  by  some  metempsy- 
chosis one  were  moulded  into  what  is 
known  as  a  "great  educator,"  a  man 


AND  EDUCATION 

of  conventions  and  platforms,  and  were 
suddenly  to  become  more  or  less  re- 
sponsible for  3,000  minds  and  souls, 
productive  thinking,  or  the  "cen- 
trifugal method"  of  teaching,  would 
not  be  postponed  to  graduation  or 
thereafter,  but  would  begin  with  the 
Freshman,  yes,  among  these  humble 
men  of  low  estate!  It  may  be  apropos 
to  recall  a  story  told  of  President 
McCosh  of  Princeton,  a  man  who  in- 
spired all  his  students  to  production 
and  enlivened  them  with  a  constant 
flow  of  humor.  On  one  occasion  he 
invited  his  predecessor,  ex-President 
McLean,  to  offer  prayers  in  the  Col- 
lege Chapel.  Dr.  McLean's  prayer 
was  at  once  all  embracing  and  remin- 
iscent ;  it  descended  from  the  foreign 
powers  to  the  heads  of  the  United 
States  government,  to  the  State  of 
New  Jersey,  through  the  Trustees, 


HUXLEY 

the  Faculty,  and,  in  a  perfectly  logi- 
cal manner,  finally  reached  the  enter- 
ing class.  This  naturally  raised  a 
great  disturbance  among  the  Sopho- 
mores, who  were  evidently  jealous  of 
the  divine  blessing.  The  disturbance 
brought  the  prayer  to  an  abrupt  close, 
and  Dr.  McCosh  was  heard  to  re- 
mark: "  I  should  think  that  Dr.  Mc- 
Lean would  have  more  sense  than  to 
pray  for  the  Freshmen." 

As  regards  the  raw  material  into 
which  'productive  thinking'  is  to  be 
instilled,  I  am  an  optimist.  I  do  not 
belong  to  the  'despair  school'  of  ed- 
ucators, and  have  no  sympathy  with 
the  army  of  editorial  writers  and  prigs 
who  are  depreciating  the  American 
student.  The  chief  trouble  lies  not 
with  our  youth,  nor  with  our  schools, 
but  with  our  adults.  How  can  springs 
rise  higher  than  their  sources?  On  the 

12 


AND  EDUCATION 

whole,  you  students  are  very  much 
above  the  average  American.  You 
are  not  driven  to  these  doors ;  cer- 
tainly in  these  days  of  youthful 
freedom  and  choice  you  came  of 
your  own  free  will.  The  very  fact 
of  your  coming  raises  you  above  the 
general  level,  and  while  you  are  here 
you  will  be  living  in  a  world  of  ideas, 
—  the  only  kind  of  a  world  at  all 
worth  living  in.  You  are  temporarily 
cut  off  more  or  less  from  the  world 
of  dollars  and  cents,  shillings  and 
pence.  Here  Huxley  helps  you  in 
extolling  the  sheer  sense  of  joy  in 
thinking  truer  and  straighter  than 
others,  a  kind  of  superiority  which 
does  not  mean  conceit,  the  possession 
of  something  which  is  denied  the 
man  in  the  street.  You  redound 
with  original  impulses  and  creative 
energy,  which  must  find  expression 
13 


HUXLEY 

somehow  or  somewhere;  if  not  under 
the  prevailing  incurrent,  or  'centrip- 
etal system'  of  academic  instruction, 
it  must  let  itself  out  in  extra-academic 
activities,  in  your  sports,  your  socie- 
ties, your  committees,  your  organiza- 
tions, your  dramatics,  all  good  things 
and  having  the  highest  educational 
value  in  so  far  as  they  represent  your 
output,  your  outflow,  your  centrifugal 
force. 

You  are,  in  fact,  in  a  contest  with 
your  intellectual  environment  outside 
of  these  walls.  Morally,  according 
to  Ferrero,  politically,  according  to 
Bryce,  and  economically,  according 
to  Carnegie,  you  are  in  the  midst  of 
a  '  triumphant  democracy.'  But  in 
the  world  of  ideas  such  as  sways  Italy, 
Germany,  England,  and  in  the  high- 
est degree  France,  you  are  in  the 
midst  of  a  *  triumphant  mediocrity.' 
14 


AND  EDUCATION 

Paris  is  a  city  where  ideas  are  at  a 
premium  and  money  values  count  for 
very  little  in  public  estimation.  The 
whole  public  waits  breathless  upon 
the  production  of  *  Chanticleer.' 
That  Walhalla  of  French  ambition, 
'  la  Gloire,'  may  be  reached  by  men 
of  ideas,  but  not  by  men  of  the  marts. 
Is  it  conceivable  that  the  police  of 
New  York  should  assemble  to  fight  a 
mob  gathered  to  break  up  the  opera 
of  a  certain  composer  ?  Is  it  con- 
ceivable that  you  students  should 
crowd  into  this  theatre  to  prevent  a 
speaker  being  heard,  as  those  of  the 
Sorbonne  did  some  years  ago  in  the 
case  of  Brunetiere  ?  If  you  should, 
no  one  in  this  city  would  understand 
you,  and  the  authorities  would  be 
called  on  promptly  to  interfere. 

A  fair  measure   of  the   culture   of 
your    environment    is    the   depth  to 
15 


HUXLEY 

which  your  morning  paper  prostitutes 
itself  for  the  dollar,  its  shades  of  yel- 
lowness, its  frivolity  or  its  unscrupu- 
lousness,  or  both.  I  sometimes  think 
it  would  be  better  not  to  read  the 
newspapers  at  all,  even  when  they  are 
conscientious,  because  of  their  lack  of 
a  sense  of  proportion,  in  the  news 
columns  at  least,  of  the  really  impor- 
tant things  in  American  life.  Our 
most  serious  evening  mentor  of  stu- 
dent manners  and  morals  gives  six 
columns  to  a  football  game  and  six 
lines  to  a  great  intercollegiate  debate. 
Such  is  the  difference  between  precept 
and  practice.  American  laurels  are 
for  the  giant  captain  of  industry ; 
when  his  life  is  threatened  or  taken 
away  acres  of  beautiful  forest  are  cut 
down  to  procure  the  paper  pulp  nec- 
essary to  set  forth  his  achievements, 
while  our  greatest  astronomer  and 
16 


AND  EDUCATION 

mathematician  passes  away  and  per- 
haps the  pulp  of  a  single  tree  will 
suffice  for  the  brief,  inconspicuous 
paragraphs  which  record  his  illness 
and  death. 

Your  British  cousin  is  in  a  far  more 
favorable  atmosphere,  beginning  with 
his  morning  paper  and  ending  with 
the  conversation  of  his  seniors  over 
the  evening  cigar.  As  a  Cambridge 
man,  having  spent  two  years  in  Lon- 
don and  the  university,  I  would  not 
describe  the  life  so  much  as  serious  as 
worth  while.  There  are  humor  and 
the  pleasures  of  life  in  abundance,  but 
what  is  done,  is  done  thoroughly  well. 
Contrast  the  comments  of  the  British 
and  American  press  on  such  a  light 
subject  as  international  polo ;  the 
former  alone  are  well  worth  reading, 
written  by  experts  and  adding  some- 
thing to  our  knowledge  of  the  game. 
17 


HUXLEY 

In  the  more  novel  subject  of  aviation 
we  look  in  vain  in  our  press  for  any 
solid  information  about  construction. 
Or  take  the  practical  subject  of  poli- 
tics ;  the  British  student  finds  every 
great  speech  delivered  in  every  part 
of  the  Empire  published  in  full  in  his 
morning  paper ;  as  an  elector  he  gets 
his  evidence  at  first  hand  instead  of 
through  the  medium  of  the  editor. 

I  believe  the  greatest  fault  of  the 
American  student  lies  in  the  over- 
development of  one  of  his  greatest 
virtues,  namely,  his  collectivism. 
His  strong  esprit  de  corps  patterns  and 
moulds  him  too  far.  The  rewards 
are  for  the  *  lock-step '  type  of  man 
who  conforms  to  the  prevailing  ideals 
of  his  college.  He  must  parade,  he 
must  cheer,  to  order.  Individualism 
is  at  a  discount ;  it  debars  a  man  from 
the  social  rewards  of  college  life.  In 

18 


AND  EDUCATION 

my  last  address  to  Columbia  students 
on  the  life  of  Darwin,1  I  asked  what 
would  be  thought  of  that  peculiar, 
ungainly,  beetle  collector  if  he  were 
to  enter  one  of  our  colleges  to-day  ? 
He  would  be  lampooned  and  laughed 
out  of  the  exercise  of  his  preferences 
and  predispositions.  The  mother  of 
a  very  talented  young  honor  man  re- 
cently confessed  to  me  that  she  never 
spoke  of  her  son's  rank  because  she 
found  it  was  considered  "queer." 
This  is  not  what  young  America 
generates,  but  what  it  borrows  or  re- 
flects from  the  environment  of  its 
elders. 

Thus  the  young  American  is  not 

1  Life  and  Works  of  Darwin.  Pop.  Sci.  Monthly, 
Apr.,  1909,  pp.  315—340.  (Address  delivered  at 
Columbia  University  on  the  one  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  Darwin's  birth,  as  the  first  of  a  series  of  nine 
lectures  on  "Charles  Darwin  and  His  Influence  on 
Science.") 

19 


HUXLEY 

lifted  up  by  the  example  of  his  sen- 
iors, he  has  to  lift  it  up.  If  he  is  a 
student  and  has  serious  ambitions  he 
represents  the  young  salt  of  his  nation, 
and  the  college  brotherhood  in  gen- 
eral is  a  light  shining  in  the  darkness. 
Thus  stumbling,  groping,  often  mis- 
led by  his  natural  leaders,  he  does 
somehow  or  other,  through  sheer 
force,  acquire  an  education,  and  is 
just  as  surely  coming  to  the  front  in 
the  leadership  of  the  American  nation 
as  the  Oxford  or  Cambridge  man  is 
leading  the  British  nation. 

Our  student  body  is  as  fine  as  can 
be,  it  represents  the  best  blood  and 
the  best  impulses  of  the  country  ;  but 
there  may  be  something  wrong,  some 
loss,  some  delay,  some  misdirection  of 
educational  energy. 

Bad  as  the  British  university  sys- 
tem may  be,  and  it  has  been  vastly 

20 


AND  EDUCATION 

improved  by  the  influence  of  Huxley, 
it  is  more  effective  than  ours  because 
more  centrifugal.  English  lads  are 
taught  to  compose,  even  to  speak  in 
Latin  and  Greek.  The  Greek  play 
is  an  anomaly  here,  it  is  an  annual 
affair  at  Cambridge.  There  are  not 
one  but  many  active  and  successful 
debating  clubs  in  Cambridge. 

The  faults  with  our  educational 
design  are  to  be  discovered  through 
study  of  the  lives  of  great  men  and 
through  one's  own  hard  and  stony 
experience.  The  best  text-books  for 
the  nurture  of  the  mind  are  these 
very  lives,  and  they  are  not  found  in 
the  lists  of  the  pedagogues.  Consult 
your  Froebel,  if  you  will,  but  follow 
the  actual  steps  to  Parnassus  of  the  men 
whose  political,  literary,  scientific,  or 
professional  career  you  expect  to  fol- 
low. If  you  would  be  a  missionary, 

21 


HUXLEY 

take  the  lives  of  Patterson  and  Liv- 
ingstone; if  an  engineer,  'The  Lives 
of  Engineers ;  '  if  a  physician,  study 
that  of  Pasteur,  which  I  consider  by 
far  the  noblest  scientific  life  of  the 
nineteenth  century  ;  if  you  would  be 
a  man  of  science,  study  the  recently 
published  lives  and  letters  of  Darwin, 
Spencer,  Kelvin,  and  of  our  prototype 
Huxley. 

Here  you  may  discover  the  secret 
of  greatness,  which  is,  first,  to  be  born 
great,  unfortunately  a  difficult  and 
often  impossible  task;  second,  to 
possess  the  instinct  of  self -education. 
You  will  find  that  every  one  of  these 
masters  while  more  or  less  influenced 
by  their  tutors  and  governors  was  led 
far  more  by  a  sort  of  internal,  instinc- 
tive feeling  that  they  must  do  certain 
things  and  learn  certain  things.  They 
may  fight  the  battle  royal  with  par- 


22 


AND  EDUCATION 

ents,  teachers,  and  professors,  they 
may  be  as  rebellious  as  ducklings 
amidst  broods  of  chickens  and  give  as 
much  concern  to  the  mother  fowls, 
but  without  exception  from  a  very 
early  age  they  do  their  own  thinking 
and  revolt  against  having  it  done  for 
them,  and  they  seek  their  own  mode 
of  learning.  The  boy  Kelvin  is  taken 
to  Germany  by  his  father  to  study  the 
mathematics  of  Kelland ;  he  slips 
down  into  the  cellar  to  the  French  of 
Fourier,  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  pub- 
lishes his  first  paper  to  demonstrate 
that  Fourier  is  right  and  Kelland  is 
wrong.  Pasteur's  first  research  in 
crystallography  is  so  brilliant  that  his 
professor  urges  him  to  devote  himself 
to  this  branch  of  science,  but  Pasteur 
insists  upon  continuing  for  five  years 
longer  his  general  studies  in  chemistry 
and  physics. 

23 


HUXLEY 

This  is  the  true  empirical,  or  la- 
boratory method  of  getting  at  the 
trouble,  if  trouble  there  be  in  the 
American  modus  operandi ;  but  a 
generation  of  our  great  educators  have 
gone  into  the  question  as  if  no  experi- 
ments had  ever  been  made.  In  the 
last  thirty  years  one  has  seen  rise  up  a 
series  of  *  healers,'  trying  to  locate  the 
supposed  weakness  in  the  American 
student:  one  finds  it  in  the  classic 
tongues  and  substitutes  the  modern ; 
one  in  the  required  system  and  sub- 
stitutes the  elective ;  one  in  the  lack 
of  contact  between  teacher  and  stu- 
dent and  brings  in  preceptors,  under 
whom  the  patient  shows  a  slight  im- 
provement. Now  the  kind  of  diag- 
nosis which  comes  from  examining 
such  a  life  as  that  of  Huxley  shows 
that  the  real  trouble  lies  in  the  pro- 
longation to  mature  years  of  what  may 
24 


AND  EDUCATION 

be  styled  the  '  centripetal  system,' 
namely,  that  afferent,  or  inflowing 
mediaeval  and  oriental  kind  of  instruc- 
tion in  which  the  student  is  rarely  if 
ever  forced  to  do  his  own  thinking. 

You  will  perceive  by  this  that  I 
am  altogether  on  your  side,  an  insur- 
gent in  education,  altogether  against 
most  of  my  profession,  altogether  in 
sympathy  with  the  over-fed  student, 
and  altogether  against  the  prevailing 
system  of  overfeeding,  which  stuffs, 
crams,  pours  in,  spoon-feeds,  and  as  a 
sort  of  deathbed  repentance  institutes 
creative  work  after  graduation. 

How  do  you  yourself  stand  on  this 
question  ?  Is  your  idea  of  a  good 
student  that  of  a  good  '  receptacle  '  ? 
Do  you  regard  your  instructors  as 
useful  grain  hoppers  whose  duty  it  is 
to  gather  kernels  of  wisdom  from  all 
sources  and  direct  them  into  your  re- 
25 


HUXLEY 

ceptive  minds  ?  Are  you  content  to 
be  a  sort  of  psychic  Sacculina,  a  vege- 
tative animal,  your  mind  a  vast  sack 
with  two  systems,  one  for  the  incur- 
rent,  the  other  for  the  outcurrent  of 
predigested  ideas  ?  If  so,  all  your 
mental  organs  of  combat  and  locomo- 
tion will  atrophy.  Do  you  put  your 
faith  in  reading,  or  in  book  know- 
ledge ?  If  so,  you  should  know  that 
not  a  five  foot  shelf  of  books,  not  even 
the  ardent  reading  of  a  fifty  foot 
shelf  aided  by  prodigious  memory  will 
give  you  that  enviable  thing  called 
culture,  because  the  yardstick  of  this 
precious  quality  is  not  what  you  take 
in  but  what  you  give  out,  and  this 
from  the  subtle  chemistry  of  your 
brain  must  have  passed  through  a 
mental  metabolism  of  your  own  so 
that  you  have  lent  something  to  it. 
To  be  a  man  of  culture  you  need  not 
26 


AND  EDUCATION 

be  a  man  of  creative  power,  because 
such  men  are  few,  they  are  born  not 
made;  but  you  must  be  a  man  of  some 
degree  of  centrifugal  force,  of  indi- 
viduality, of  critical  opinion,  who 
must  make  over  what  is  read  into 
conversation  and  into  life.  Yes,  one 
little  idea  of  your  own  well  expressed 
has  a  greater  cultural  value  than  one 
hundred  ideas  you  absorb;  one  page 
that  you  produce,  finely  written,  new 
to  science  or  to  letters  and  really 
worth  reading,  outweighs  for  your 
own  purposes  the  five  foot  shelf.  On 
graduation,  presto,  all  changes,  then 
of  necessity  must  your  life  be  inde- 
pendent and  centrifugal ;  and  just  in 
so  far  as  it  has  these  powers  will  it  be 
successful ;  just  in  so  far  as  it  is  merely 
imitative  will  it  be  a  failure. 

There  is  no  revolution  in  the  con- 
trary, or  outflowing  design.    Like  all 
27 


HUXLEY 

else  in  the  world  of  thought  it  is,  in 
the  germ  at  least,  as  old  as  the  Greeks 
and  its  illustrious  pioneer  was  Socrates 
(469—399  B.  c.),  who  led  the  ap- 
proach to  truth  not  by  laying  down 
the  law  himself  but  by  means  of  an- 
swers required  of  his  students.  The 
efferent  outflowing  principle,  more- 
over, is  in  the  program  of  the  British 
mathematician,  Perry  and  many  other 
reformers  to-day. 

Against  the  centripetal  theory  of 
acquiring  culture  Huxley  revolted 
with  all  his  might.  His  daily  train- 
ing in  the  centrifugal  school  was  in 
the  genesis  of  opinion ;  and  he  in- 
cessantly practiced  the  precept  that 
forming  one's  own  opinion  is  infinitely 
better  than  borrowing  one.  Our 
sophisticated  age  discourages  origin- 
ality of  view  because  of  the  plenitude 
of  a  ready-made  supply  of  editorials, 
28 


AND  EDUCATION 

of  reviews,  of  reviews  of  reviews,  of 
critiques,  comments,  translations  and 
cribs.  Study  political  speeches,  not 
editorials  about  them  ;  read  original 
debates,  speeches,  and  reports.  If 
you  purpose  to  be  a  naturalist  get  as 
soon  as  you  can  at  the  objects  them- 
selves ;  if  you  would  be  an  artist,  go 
to  your  models ;  if  a  writer,  on  the 
same  principle  take  your  authors  at 
first  hand,  and,  after  you  have  wrestled 
with  the  texts,  and  reached  the  full 
length  of  your  own  fathom  line,  then 
take  the  fathom  line  of  the  critic  and 
reviewer.  Do  not  trust  to  mental 
peptones.  Carry  the  independent,  in- 
quisitive, skeptical  and  even  rebellious 
spirit  of  the  graduate  school  well 
down  into  undergraduate  life,  and 
even  into  school  life.  If  you  are  a 
student  force  yourself  to*  think  inde- 
pendently ;  if  a  teacher  compel  your 
29 


HUXLEY 

youth  to  express  their  own  minds. 
In  listening  to  a  lecture  weigh  the 
evidence  as  presented,  cultivate  a 
polite  skepticism,  not  affected  but 
genuine,  keep  a  running  fire  of  inter- 
rogation marks  in  your  mind,  and 
you  will  finally  develop  a  mind  of 
your  own.  Do  not  climb  that 
mountain  of  learning  in  the  hope 
that  when  you  reach  the  summit  you 
will  be  able  to  think  for  yourself; 
think  for  yourself  while  you  are 
climbing. 

In  studying  the  lives  of  your  great 
men  you  will  find  certain  of  them 
were  veritable  storehouses  of  facts, 
but  Darwin,  the  greatest  of  them  all 
in  the  last  century,  depended  largely 
upon  his  inveterate  and  voluminous 
powers  of  note-taking.  Thus  you 
may  pray  for  the  daily  bread  of  real 
mental  growth,  for  the  future  paradise 

3° 


AND  EDUCATION 

is  a  state  of  mind  and  not  a  state  of 
memory.  The  line  of  thought  is  the 
line  of  greatest  resistance  ;  the  line  of 
memory  is  the  line  of  least  resistance  ; 
in  itself  it  is  purely  imitative,  like  the 
gold  or  silver  electroplating  process 
which  lends  a  superficial  coating  of 
brilliancy  or  polish  to  what  may  be  a 
shallow  mind. 

The  case  is  deliberately  overstated 
to  give  it  emphasis. 

True,  the  accumulated  knowledge 
of  what  has  been  thought  and  said, 
serves  as  the  gravity  law  which  will 
keep  you  from  flying  off  at  a  tangent. 
But  no  warning  signals  are  needed, 
there  is  not  the  least  danger  that  con- 
structive thinking  will  drive  you  away 
from  learning;  it  will  much  more 
surely  drive  you  to  it,  with  a  deeply 
intensified  reverence  for  your  intellec- 
tual forebears  ;  in  fact,  the  eldest  off- 

31 


HUXLEY 

spring  of  centrifugal  education  is  that 
keen  and  fresh  appetite  for  knowledge 
which  springs  only  from  trying  to  add 
your  own  mite  to  it.  How  your 
Maxwell,  Herz,  Rontgen,  Curie,  with 
their  world-invigorating  discoveries 
among  the  laws  of  radiant  matter,  be- 
gin to  soar  in  your  estimation  when 
you  yourself  wrest  one  single  new 
fact  from  the  reluctant  world  of 
atoms !  How  your  modern  poets, 
Maeterlinck  and  Rostand,  take  on  the 
air  of  inspiration  when  you  would 
add  a  line  of  prose  verse  to  what  they 
are  delving  for  in  this  mysterious 
human  faculty  of  ours.  Regard  Vol- 
taire at  the  age  of  ten  in  *  Louis-le- 
Grand,'  the  Eton  of  France,  already 
producing  bad  verses,  but  with  a  pas- 
sionate voracity  for  poetry  and  the 
drama.  Regard  the  youthful  Huxley 
returning  from  his  voyage  of  the 
32 


AND  EDUCATION 

Rattlesnake'  and  laying  out  for 
himself  a  ten  years'  course  in  search 
of  pure  information. 

This  route  of  your  own  to  opinions, 
ideas,  and  the  discovery  of  new  facts 
or  principles  brings  you  back  again  to 
Huxley  as  the  man  who  always  had 
something  of  his  own  to  say  and 
labored  to  say  it  in  such  a  way  as  to 
force  people  to  listen  to  him.  His 
wondrous  style  did  not  come  easily 
to  him;  he  himself  told  me  it  cost 
him  years  of  effort,  and  I  consider  his 
advice  about  style  far  wiser  than  that 
of  Herbert  Spencer.  Why  forego 
pleasures,  turn  your  back  on  the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  and 
devote  your  life  to  erudition,  ob- 
servation, and  the  pen  if  you  remain 
unimpressive,  if  you  cannot  get  an 
audience,  if  no  one  cares  to  read  what 
you  write  ?  This  moral  is  one  of  the 

33 


HUXLEY 

first  that  Huxley  has  impressed  upon 
you,  namely,  write  to  be  read;  if 
necessary  "stoop  to  conquer,"  employ 
all  your  arts  and  wiles  to  get  an  audi- 
ence in  science,  in  literature,  in  the 
arts,  in  politics.  Get  an  audience  you 
must,  otherwise  you  will  be  a  cipher 
and  not  a  force. 

Pursuant  of  the  constructive  design, 
the  measure  of  the  teacher's  success  is 
the  degree  in  which  ideas  come  not 
from  him  but  from  his  pupils.  A 
brilliant  address  may  produce  a  tem- 
porary emotion  of  admiration,  a  dry 
lecture  may  produce  a  permanent 
productive  impulse  in  the  hearers. 
One  may  compare  some  who  are  pop- 
ularly known  as  gifted  teachers  to 
expert  swimmers  who  sit  on  the  bank 
and  talk  inspiringly  on  analyses  of 
strokes  ;  the  centrifugal  teacher  takes 
the  pupils  into  the  water  with  him, 
34 


AND  EDUCATION 

he  may  even  pretend  to  drown  and 
call  for  a  rescue.  In  football  par- 
lance the  coach  must  get  into  the 
scrimmage  with  the  team.  This  was 
the  lesson  taught  me  by  the  great 
embryologist  Francis  Balfour  of  Cam- 
bridge, who  was  singularly  noted  for 
doing  joint  papers  with  his  men.  An 
experiment  I  have  tried  with  marked 
success  in  order  to  cultivate  centrifu- 
gal power  and  expression  at  the  same 
time  is  to  get  out  of  the  lecture  chair 
and  make  my  students  in  turn  lecture 
to  me.  This  is  virtually  the  famous 
method  of  teaching  law  re-discovered 
by  the  educational  genius  of  Langdell; 
the  students  do  all  the  lecturing  and 
discoursing,  the  professor  lolls  quietly 
in  his  chair  and  makes  his  comments  ; 
the  stimulus  upon  ambition  and  com- 
petition is  fairly  magical ;  there  is  in 
the  classroom  the  real  intellectual 
35 


HUXLEY 

struggle  for  existence  which  one 
meets  in  the  world  of  affairs.  I  would 
apply  this  very  Socratic  principle  in 
every  branch  of  instruction,  early  and 
late,  and  thus  obey  the  '  acceleration ' 
law  in  education  which  I  have  spoken 
of  above  as  bringing  into  earlier  and 
earlier  stages  those  powers  which  are 
to  be  actually  of  service  in  after  life. 
There  is  then  no  mystery  about 
education  if  we  plan  it  along  the  ac- 
tual lines  of  self-development  fol- 
lowed by  these  great  leaders  and  shape 
its  deep  under-current  principles  after 
our  own  needs  and  experience.  Look 
early  at  the  desired  goal  and  work 
toward  it  from  the  very  beginning. 
The  proof  that  the  secret  does  not  lie 
in  subject,  or  language,  but  in  prepa- 
ration for  the  living  productive  prin- 
ciple is  found  in  the  fact  that  there 
have  been  relatively  educated  men  in 
36 


AND  EDUCATION 

every  stage  of  history.  The  wall 
painters  in  the  Magdalenian  caves  were 
the  producers  and  hence  the  educated 
men  of  their  day.  This  goal  of  pro- 
duction was  sought  even  earlier  by  the 
leaders  of  Eolithic  men  200,000  years 
ago  and  is  equally  magnetic  for  the 
men  of  dirigible  balloons  and  aero- 
planes of  our  day.  It  is,  to  follow  in 
mind-culture  the  principle  of  addition 
and  accretion  characteristic  of  all  liv- 
ing things,  namely,  to  develop  the 
highest  degree  of  productive  power, 
centrifugal  force,  original,  creative, 
individual  efficiency.  Through  this 
the  world  advances ;  the  Neolithic 
man  with  his  invention  of  polished 
implements  succeeds  the  Palaeolithic, 
and  the  man  of  books  and  printing 
replaces  the  savage. 

The  standards  of  a  liberal  mind  are 
and     always    have    been     the    same, 
37 


HUXLEY 

namely,  the  sense  of  Truth  and  Beauty, 
both  of  which  are  again  in  con- 
formity with  Nature. 

"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,  that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 
KEATS'  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn. 

The  sources  of  our  facts  are  and 
always  have  been  the  same,  namely, 
the  learning  of  what  men  before  you 
have  observed  and  recorded,  and  the 
advance  only  through  the  observation 
of  new  truth,  that  is,  old  to  nature 
but  new  to  man.  The  handling  of 
this  knowledge  has  always  been  the 
same,  namely,  through  human  reason. 
The  giving  forth  of  this  knowledge 
and  thus  the  furthering  of  ideas  and 
customs  has  and  always  will  be  the 
same,  namely,  through  expression, 
vocal,  written,  or  manual,  that  is,  in 
symbols  and  in  design. 

It  follows  that  the  all  round  liber- 
38 


AND  EDUCATION 

ally  educated  man,  from  Palaeolithic 
times  to  the  time  when  the  earth 
shall  become  a  cold  cinder,  will  al- 
ways be  the  same,  namely,  the  man 
who  follows  his  standards  of  truth  and 
beauty,  who  employs  his  learning  and 
observation,  his  reason,  his  expression, 
for  purposes  of  production,  that  is,  to 
add  something  of  his  own  to  the  stock 
of  the  world' s  ideas.  This  is  the 
author's  conception  of  a  liberal  edu- 
cation. 

One  cannot  too  often  quote  the 
rugged  insistence  of  Carlyle :  "  Pro- 
duce !  Produce !  Were  it  but  the 
pitifullest  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a 
product,  produce  it  in  God's  name ! 
'Tis  the  utmost  thou  hast  in  thee: 
out  with  it,  then." 

Now  note  that  whereas  there  are 
the  above  six  powers,  namely,  truth 
and  beauty,  learning  and  observation, 
39 


HUXLEY 

reason,  and  expression,  which  subserve 
the  seventh,  production  or  constructive 
thinking,  and  whereas  the  giving  out 
of  ideas  is  the  object  to  be  attained, 
only  one  power  figures  prominently 
in  our  modern  system  of  college  and 
school  education,  namely,  the  learning 
of  facts  and  the  memory  thereof.  It 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  this 
makes  up  95%  of  modern  education. 
Who  are  the  meteors  of  school  and 
college  days  ?  For  the  most  part  those 
with  precocious  or  well  trained  mem- 
ories. Why  do  so  many  of  these 
meteors  flash  out  of  existence  at  grad- 
uation ?  The  answer  is  simple  if  you 
accept  my  conception  of  education. 
Whereas  it  takes  six  powers  to  make 
a  liberally  educated  man  or  woman, 
and  seven  to  make  a  productive  man 
or  woman,  only  one  power  has  been 
cultivated  assiduously  in  the  '  centrip- 
40 


AND  EDUCATION 

etal '  education ;  whereas  there  are 
two  great  gateways  of  knowledge, 
learning  and  observation,  only  one  has 
been  continuously  passed  through; 
whereas  there  are  two  universal  stand- 
ards of  truth  and  beauty,  only  truth  has 
constantly  been  held  up  to  you,  and 
that  in  precept  rather  than  in  practice. 
For  nothing  is  surer  than  this,  that 
the  sense  of  truth  must  come  as  a 
daily  personal  experience  in  the  life 
of  the  student  through  testing  values 
for  himself,  as  it  does  in  the  life  of 
the  scientist,  the  artist,  the  physi- 
cian, the  engineer,  the  merchant. 
Note  that  whereas  you  are  powerless 
unless  you  can  by  the  metabolism  of 
logic  make  the  sum  of  acquired  and 
observed  knowledge  your  own,  that 
kind  of  work-a-day  efficient  logic  has 
never  been  forced  upon  you  and  you 
are  daily,  perhaps  hourly,  guilty  of 
41 


HUXLEY 

the  non  sequitur,  the  post  hoc  ergo 
propter  hocy  the  'undistributed  middle,' 
and  all  those  innocent  sins  against 
truth  which  come  through  the  il- 
logical mind. 

"  That  man,'*  says  Huxley,  "  has 
had  a  liberal  education  .  .  .  whose 
intellect  is  a  clear,  cold,  logic  engine, 
with  all  its  parts  of  equal  strength, 
and  in  smooth  working  order  ;  ready, 
like  a  steam-engine,  to  be  turned  to 
any  kind  of  work,  and  spin  the  gos- 
samers as  well  as  forge  the  anchors  of 
the  mind." 

Note  that  whereas  you  are  a  useless 
member  of  society  unless  you  can  give 
forth  something  of  what  you  know 
and  feel  in  writing,  speaking,  or  de- 
sign, your  expressive  powers  may  have 
been  atrophied  through  insufficient 
use.  In  brief,  you  may  have  shunned 
individual  opinion,  observation,  logic, 
expression,  because  they  are  each  and 
42 


AND  EDUCATION 
every  one  on  the  lines  of  greatest  re- 
sistance. And  your  teachers  not  only 
allowed  you  but  actually  encouraged 
and  rewarded  you  for  following  the 
lines  of  least  resistance  in  the  accu- 
rate reproduction,  in  examination 
papers  and  marking  systems,  of 
their  own  ideas  and  those  you  found 
in  books. 

May  you,  therefore,  write  down 
these  seven  words  and  read  them  over 
every  morning  :  Truth,  Beauty,  Learn- 
ing, Observation,  Reason,  Expres- 
sion, Production. 

In  the  wondrous  old  quilt  work  of 
inherited,  or  ancestral  predispositions 
which  make  your  being  you  may  be 
gifted  with  all  these  seven  powers  in 
equal  and  well  balanced  degree;  if 
you  are  so  blessed  you  have  a  great 
career  before  you.  If,  as  is  more 
likely,  you  have  in  full  measure  only 
a  part  of  each,  or  some  in  large  meas- 

43 


HUXLEY 

ure,  some  in  small,  keep  on  the  daily 
examination  of  your  chart  as  giving 
you  the  canons  of  a  liberal  education 
and  of  a  productive  mind. 

Remember  that  as  regards  the  some- 
what overworked  word  'service'  every 
addition  in  every  conceivable  depart- 
ment of  human  activity  which  is  con- 
structive of  society  is  service  ;  that  the 
spirit  of  science  is  to  transfer  some- 
thing of  value  from  the  unknown  into 
the  realm  of  the  known,  and  is,  there- 
fore, identical  with  the  spirit  of  litera- 
ture; that  the  moral  test  of  every 
advance  is  whether  or  not  it  is  con- 
structive, for  whatever  is  constructive 
is  moral. 

I  would  not  for  a  moment  take 
advantage  of  the  present  opportunity 
to  discourage  the  study  of  human  na- 
ture and  of  the  humanities,  but  for 
what  is  called  the  best  opening  for  a 
constructive  career  let  it  be  Nature. 
44 


AND  EDUCATION 

The  ground  for  my  preference  is 
that  human  nature  is  an  exhaustible 
fountain  of  research  ;  Homer  under- 
stood it  well;  Solomon  fathomed  it; 
Shakespeare  divined  it,  both  normal 
and  abnormal;  the  modernists  have 
been  squeezing  out  the  last  drops  of 
abnormality. 

Nature,  studied  since  Aristotle's 
time,  is  still  full  to  the  brim;  no 
perceptible  falling  of  its  tides  is 
evident  from  any  point  at  which  it  is 
attacked,  from  nebula?  to  protoplasm; 
it  is  always  wholesome,  refreshing,  and 
invigorating.  Of  the  two  creative 
literary  artists  of  our  time,  Maeter- 
linck, jaded  with  human  abnormality, 
comes  back  to  the  bee  and  the  flowers 
and  the  'blue  bird,'  with  a  delicious 
renewal  of  youth,  while  Rostand  turns 
to  the  barnyard. 


45 


DATE  DUE 

UC1        JU 

L  *  »  1969 

JR 

^liteB 

D  "   IJ1W 

APR 

61976 

Mfn  ui 

LR     ft  1976 

KLU   Tf!r 

CAYLORD 

PHINTIO  IN  O.».  A. 

Ill  Illl  II  III 


3   1970  00053  7487 


^000526189    6 


